ently be
observed, are for the most part the creatures of the mind. This is in
the first place a mode of observation more agreeable to the pride and
conscious elevation of man, and is in the next place more suitable
to morality, and the vindication of all that is most admirable in the
system of the universe. It is just, that what is most frequently passing
in the mind, and is entertained there with the greatest favour, should
leave its traces upon the countenance. It is thus that the high and
exalted philosopher, the poet, and the man of benevolence and humanity
are sometimes seen to be such by the bystander and the stranger. While
the malevolent, the trickish, and the grossly sensual, give notice
of what they are by the cast of their features, and put their
fellow-creatures upon their guard, that they may not be made the prey of
these vices.

But the march of craniology or phrenology, by whatever name it is
called, is directly the reverse of this. It assigns to us organs, as far
as the thing is explained by the professors either to the public or to
their own minds, which are entailed upon us from our birth, and which
are altogether independent, or nearly so, of any discipline or volition
that can be exercised by or upon the individual who drags their
intolerable chain. Thus I am told of one individual that he wants the
organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that
defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen
by the rest of mankind. Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his
case is equally hopeless. I shrink from considering the condition of the
wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in
full and ample proportions. The case is like that of astrology

(Their stars are more in fault than they),

with this aggravation, that our stars, so far as the faculty of
prediction had been supposed to be attained, swayed in few things; but
craniology climbs at once to universal empire; and in her map, as I
have said, there are no vacant places, no unexplored regions and happy
wide-extended deserts.

It is all a system of fatalism. Independently of ourselves, and
far beyond our control, we are reserved for good or for evil by the
predestinating spirit that reigns over all things. Unhappy is the
individual who enters himself in this school. He has no consolation,
except the gratified wish to know distressing truths, unless we add to
this the